A Love Song for Bobby Long
2004
**
Director: Shainee Gabel
Cast: John Travolta, Gabriel Macht, Scarlett Johansson, Deborah Kara Unger
A young woman misses the funeral of her mother, who abandoned her, but finds two literary losers occupying the dead woman's house in New Orleans. One of them is a literature professor turned alcoholic, and the other one his old student who is struggling to finish his book (about the events of the film, would you know). The promising premise and John Travolta's wonderful performance are not enough to help the film overcome the massive overlength and the soapy clichés. Adapted from Ronald Everett Capps' novel Off Magazine Street.
